Based in Gillingham, Kent, MEMS Power Generation (MEMS) supplies power generators to industry and commerce throughout the UK utilising the company’s specialised fleet of HGV delivery and refuelling vehicles as well as specialist crane lorries. Since 2006, MEMS has experienced rapid growth in its rental business which has driven an investment in MCS-rm.

The Challenge

MEMS Power Generation prides itself on providing a start-to-finish power generator supply service that includes delivery, refuelling and maintenance of the generating equipment anywhere in the country. Since the growth of its generator hire operation, MEMS began to realise that the old operations management systems were not up to the job of co-ordinating the logistics of an increasingly complex business.

Rental Director Mark Diffey explained: “It was apparent that we had an old manual system to manage the fleet. Fleet managers had paper diaries and perhaps a few spreadsheets to document their fleet movement, but each process worked in isolation and there was no one system pulling it all together.”

The Solution

As a result, Mark reviewed the specialist hire management software market before drawing up a shortlist of two solutions – MCS-rm and another leading hire management solution.

“We settled on MCS-rm because of the huge levels of support and understanding of our business issues that MCS gave us,” Mark continued. “We also wanted to leverage our investment in our existing Sage financial system, so it was important that we worked closely with MCS to achieve a perfect fit.”

The functions chosen by MEMS included core Hire, Asset Management, Transport Manager, Workshop & Maintenance, Report Writer, Proof of Delivery, MCS-crm as well as MCS-web.

MEMS originally purchased MCS-rm and set about integrating it with their Sage accountancy software.

Mark said. “The MCS solution is easy to use and allows the two systems to share information. The result is an extremely stable, easy to use software platform that puts us in control and meets our requirements.”

The Benefits

Once MCS-rm was live, users were able to benefit from its relational capabilities with Sage. Customer balances, credit limits and other financial information input into Sage is automatically transferred to the relevant fields in the customer profiles in MCS-rm. The hire software solution, in turn, generates invoices which are transferred back to Sage to give an instant picture of account activity such as payments pending and payments made.

“The advantage of the MCS solution is that it ‘talks’ to our accountancy system and vice versa,” Mark added. “Each knows what the other is doing and each relies on the other’s database for information. As a result, our users have a relevant, consistent and up-to-date view of all customer and asset hire activity.”

Mark explained that the Report Writer functionality is used by the company’s System Administrator for producing scheduled weekly reports of customer activity for the relevant managers. These reports highlight critical factors such as accounts that had reached or passed their agreed credit limit. Such situations represent a ‘risk’ element to the generator hire company should the contract be continually extended before any invoices are generated, so it is critical to keep on top of the situation.

“Extending contracts beyond the pre-agreed deal is another valuable function which we use regularly,” Mark continued. “MCS-rm allows us to set up contracts by the hour, the day or the week – or any combination of these.”

This is supported by the Meter Reading feature within MCS-rm. Most of MEMS larger plant have timing meters attached which are activated at the start of the hire term and turned off at the end. This ‘operational’ time is signed off by the customer and logged onto MCS-rm by MEMs to provide an accurate account of the hire period. Any over-use is consequently invoiced above the agreed contract terms. Service intervals are also better monitored and controlled using the Meter Reading function.

The Meter Reading feature integrates with the Workshop & Maintenance function within MCS-rm. Every piece of equipment must have a service check after a pre-determined operational period and it is critical that it isn’t sent out on hire before any necessary maintenance can be completed. MCS-rm lets the company co-ordinate every aspect of the hire process so that the right equipment goes to the right place in the best condition.

“If there is a problem with a piece of equipment, we can look up its service history straight away and quickly remedy any fault,” Mark claimed. “It’s all about control. Control over contracts, control over stock management, over invoicing and over cash flow.”

Nowhere is control better demonstrated than the Proof of Delivery (POD) feature that was developed by MCS to enable MEMS to scan in multiple documents, such as delivery notes. The system automatically generates a bar code which records all the variables involved such as the job number, delivery date, delivery time and the asset on hire and stores them electronically with the relevant contract. This not only enables MEMS to quickly and efficiently satisfy invoice queries, but it also eliminates invoicing errors and reduces the possibility of mislaying documents.

All in all, Mark claimed, MCS-rm has given the company the control it needs to reduce errors, increase customer satisfaction and enable the company to plan ahead for market changes that influence supply and demand.

The Future

“Yes, we have big plans for MCS in the future,” Mark enthused. “We want to activate the Customer Web Portal module in MCS-rm so we can create an on-line environment that customers can access and hire equipment themselves. Then we will integrate that with our tracking software to give them greater control of their order.”

To find out how MCS-rm could help your business, call us on +27 (0)11 083 7530 or use our enquiry form.

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